Break
by Lara129
Summary: Just because the boss needs a vacation, it doesn't mean that *everyone* gets to relax. (Pre-series, rated for graphic imagery.)
1. Chapter 1

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 _break (n.): a brief rest, as from work_

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Being foremost among demons meant Mazikeen had responsibilities beyond physical torturing.

Still _including_ that, of course. She'd never have stood for it otherwise. But there was administrative crap she had to put up with. Underlings to oversee. Disputes to quash. At least overseeing a realm primarily comprised of and manifested as the contents of its occupants' minds meant there were few logistical concerns.

And, of course, there was the task of managing Hell's ruler himself. A job which, particularly in the last few centuries, had taken up greater and greater chunks of her time - and rendered her standard methods of jollying him out of his pissy moods less and less effective.

Though she did try.

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"Lucifer."

A flicker of his attention.

"I'm setting up the program for this serial date-rapist we just got in, wanted your read on it." Hell's standard procedure of allowing someone's own guilty conscience to dictate their torments worked without much supervision in most cases, but a decent percentage of arrivals simply didn't have remorse or shame as part of their makeup.

Maze was always good at spotting those. Like recognized like.

And at such times, it fell to her, or one of the demons under her supervision, to design a punishment personally. She could (and occasionally did) do it in her sleep by now, but Lucifer was capable of some quite creative insights - and moreover, he needed the distraction.

"I couldn't decide," she went on, "between putting him into a large-angry-cellmate scenario right away, while he's still sane, or letting him spend a few millennia terrified and confused on a bad roofie trip first. Whaddya think?"

No emotion - not a tinge of amusement or even anger - colored his reply. "I don't care, Maze. Do what you will."

It was infuriating. It was baffling. And, eventually, worrying.

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When she sought him out again some time later, he was behind one of the doors. That in itself wasn't unusual; he'd never been any more interested in a purely hands-off approach to his job than she was.

When Maze reached out and grasped the handle, she took a moment to flick through the impressions it offered her of the sinner behind it. A woman who'd borne three children, poisoned them one at a time to draw attention and sympathy. Two had died before she was caught, the third went blind from toxic overexposure.

Even behind bars, she'd managed to seduce a guard, get herself pregnant again, and commenced sneaking gulps of whatever cleaning products she could get her hands on, determined to wring all the medical mileage possible out of this one before it could be born and taken away from her. But she'd misjudged, eventually, and destroyed herself as well as the child within her.

Now she was here. And when Maze pushed her door open, she saw the woman strapped to an operating table, Lucifer, having assumed his physical form and garbed it in a doctor's white coat, looming over her. "Now, ma'am," he assured her pleasantly. "I appreciate your insight, surely you've spent more time in hospital than _actual_ physicians do, but in my opinion anesthesia is quite unnecessary for this procedure."

He turned to a stainless-steel cart larger in surface area than the one on which the now-shrieking woman lay, piled high with variegated implements of torture.

Not all of them, Maze noted, were sourced from the imagination of his 'patient'. She spotted a few favorites from his personal toyboxes - plus some of _hers_ , which he hadn't _asked_ to borrow, but whatever.

As he made the next cut with a twisted rusty knife, the woman's terrified eyes fell on Maze, and she began babbling pleas for rescue.

It always took them a few subjective decades to get over expecting that.

Lucifer followed her gaze, and he smiled broadly. He hadn't included a mask in his costume, and gouts of spurting blood had stained his teeth red. "Ah, Mazikeen, brilliant timing! I could use a nurse. Care to assist?"

After a moment, she shrugged and took up station on the other side of the table. Held open the flap of skin he'd just parted while he sawed pieces of it away and blithely assured the woman that if he took her apart thoroughly enough, they'd get to the root of exactly what was wrong with her.

Tried to convince herself that what she saw in his eyes was no different from the same old righteous glee in a just torment.

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The next splinter of Hell she tracked him down in wasn't the sort that lent to their manifesting themselves. The occupant had provoked a shoot-out with the police and holed up in an decrepit apartment building, determined to rack up as many kills as possible before going down in a blaze of glory. Instead, he'd ended up stepping backwards into an old elevator shaft, plunging through utter darkness and terror for what had felt like eternity before finding his death at the bottom.

Here, it _was_ an eternity; he'd been falling through nothingness since he arrived, no sight or sensation, no sound but his own ceaseless screaming.

Lucifer looked to Maze; they knew each other well enough that she could read his face whether or not he was wearing one. "He died on impact," he remarked conversationally. "Never felt the pain he was so terrified of as he fell. I keep contemplating allowing him to finish the job here; surely I could muster up some lava or spikes to cushion his landing. Perhaps I will someday, if he gets bored. But so far, the longer he's falling, the more it's shredding his soul to pieces. Fascinating."

Then he was gone, leaving Maze alone in the incoherent aftermath of a fall that had never truly ended.

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Hell had been chaos at the beginning. No form, no thought, no doors, just a seething cauldron of humanity's burgeoning wickedness. Creating even the semblance of matter from who and what those damned souls had been was a skill that took time for a former angel to learn; when Lucifer crafted Mazikeen, he used the bloodshed from his own impact as a base, gave her a voice from the echoes of his screams as he wrenched twisted bones and wings back into place, and seeded her thoughts with all-consuming fury.

She was of him and by him and thralled to him, then - an extension of his will, a tool he called upon to aid him as they built Hell from haphazard misery into a place where every individual could be tormented as they most deserved. Other demons were needed, in time, but there was plenty of other source material to choose from by then. Maze had only to visit a cell or two, scour a victim's memory for the tyrants or torturers they most feared, and allow things to germinate from there.

But regardless of how it began, any being given the ability to think would eventually develop a sense of self, and Mazikeen was not merely a reflection for long. The fallen Lightbringer was still the lord and master of the darkness he'd created, but even as she learned herself, she learned him, his quirks and his moods. It had startled Lucifer the first time she'd argued with him, defied him, but _she_ hadn't been surprised; she'd known how he would react, just as she knew that in time he'd come to enjoy their disagreements.

She knew _him_.

Or she had once.

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It was in a slightly older neighborhood, the personal perdition of a colonial witch-hunter, that she found him next. As Maze passed through the man's door, she made a mental note to update his punishment. He'd been spending most of his time since arrival being ducked again and again into a pond, drawn up just long enough to plead his innocence and beg for release before he was drowning again, and it was still effective, but she'd found that it was sometimes interesting to use modern means to harass such souls as his.

A fantasy novel, perhaps, literary poison being read to the innocent ears of a classful of eager children, while he tried vainly to scream his protests loudly enough to blot it out. That would be amusing.

But he wasn't drowning at the moment. Lucifer had dragged him from the pond and held him, fist clenched in his sopping collar. "Why?" he demanded. "Why did you kill so many? What were you after?" Without effort, he wrenched the man off his feet and drew their faces close. "What did you desire?"

Maze jolted. She hadn't seen Lucifer pull this particular trick in a very, very long time. Hell, after all, tended to be much more concerned with what someone desired _least_.

"I- " he kicked, fighting to ease the pressure on his throat enough to answer. "I wanted to punish them. Punish them all."

"All?" Lucifer's voice dropped to a snarl. "There _is_ no punishing them all. It never _ends_." Contemptuously, he flung his captive back at the pond, with enough force that the impact might've broken his neck if he were still corporeal. He turned and strode away, stopping short only when he realized that Maze stood between him and the door.

"We have to talk."

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Lucifer's throne room was generally a physical place, especially these days, and once she'd more or less marched him there, he sprawled indolently on his dais. "What is it, Maze? Another petty grievance you need me to sort out?"

"Cut the crap, Lucifer. What I _need_ is for you to tell me what's going on."

Anything else in creation might have quailed before the glare he fixed on her then, but Mazikeen held. Hell surged around them as they locked in silent conflict, borders stretching with every new soul it ensnared, the background roar of screaming always audible, even here.

Many times now, she'd found Lucifer patrolling those borders. There was a particular district of Hell where most of the animal abusers ended up, locked in individual cages but occupying the same vast zoo, so that the constructs who wandered among them, jeering and throwing things and never permitting them rest, could be shared communally. It saved energy.

Lucifer had been prowling like those souls did, frantic as a penned beast, and that was the main reason Maze wasn't surprised when he finally spoke.

"I can't do it anymore, Maze. I need to get out."

They'd die.

She knew it, even as she absorbed his words. God had cast Lucifer down and would never permit him to return; if he tried to lay siege to Heaven, his punishment this time would be not banishment but destruction.

That didn't change the fact that her place was at his side.

"I didn't get up today planning to storm the Silver City, but -"

Lucifer reached out, held her arm. "I'm not talking about that, Maze. Earth."

She reared back as though he'd slapped her. This...this she hadn't been expecting.

Earth? Earth was behind every one of the doors in the hallways beyond, the source of every nightmare she'd ever exploited to torture its former residents, a breeding ground for atrocities that were still capable of surprising even her, now and again. What interest could it possibly hold for him?

Her incredulity must have shown on her face. "It can't all be that," he jerked his chin at the exit to the corridors. "You know, I've been monitoring the new souls, and the one thing they all have in common...they didn't want to leave to come here. There has to be something more. Something they miss. And I don't even know the questions to ask them what it is." He stood, holding her before him. "So I'm going to find out, Maze. I'm going."

In a realm forged by illusory horror, the only bastion of truth Mazikeen had even known was the voice of her creator. But even if Lucifer had been capable of lying, she would have known his fervent declaration was genuine. This wasn't a whim he could be argued out of. And though the idea was more staggering to her than the simple obliteration that faced them if they should approach Heaven, her duty hadn't altered.

She carved a confident smile across her face. ( _She_ could lie just fine.) "Then what are we waiting for?"


	2. Chapter 2

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 _break (n.): a rush away from a place; an attempt to escape_

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Somewhere, a heart was beating. And the sound was...strange. Rhythmic. Measured. Calm.

That wasn't right.

Souls entering Hell left their hearts behind with the rest of their rotting meat, of course, but most of them still manifested heartbeats, louder if anything than they'd been in life, and if you were close enough to listen, those frenzied palpitations were an easy barometer of agony.

A heartbeat like Maze heard now meant someone was slacking off on the job.

Fists tight on the handles on her favorite daggers, she stalked down the warpath, bound in the direction of that incongruous pulse...

Or would have. Something else was wrong. Her movements were delayed, as though there were some sort of filter between intent and action, and making matters worse, the ground below her gave and shifted. Sand? she thought dazedly. Quicksand? That was common enough, but wouldn't explain the lack of terror in that heartbeat, and certainly not why _she_ would be affected. Maze looked up, disorientation making her furious.

And saw the ocean.

That, too, was something she knew - there were surely enough souls drowning in Hell to _fill_ an ocean. But those souls were primarily trapped in choppy thrashing deeps. It had never occurred to her to wonder what the surface of the water would look like - she'd never pictured so vast and dark an expanse, cleft only by shifting paler lines that rolled towards the shore. She watched one until it broke, listened to the sound it made when it came and realized she'd found the source of her mysterious heartbeat.

Even as clarity reasserted itself, reminding her of Lucifer's plan and where they must now be, another brightness came to life in the water, covered by a shadowy veil at first, then casting it off and beaming outwards, distorted yet by the waves. What...

It drew her gaze higher, and there was a copy of the sphere, much clearer, shaking off the last of its dark streamers, those riddled themselves by much smaller points of light. Maze frowned, putting the pieces together from elements of various Hellscapes.

Moon. Clouds. Stars.

All had the capacity to invoke fear in some way - in at least some of her former captives' estimations - but swirled together they created something else entirely, and it was more than a footing of fickle sand that held her fast now.

"Maze?"

She looked along the shore and Lucifer stood there, only a pace or two away. He'd taken his more human guise, skin nearly as pale in the moonlight as the wings still braced against the wind off the sea, making his expression visible enough.

It vaguely comforting to see him as freaked out as she was.

Especially once the sight of those feathers flicking back made her aware that the same wind was bathing over her own body, stirring too many tiny hairs to count, crawling up her nose and between her parted lips.

Anger swelled in Maze again. Were human souls truly so limited in their comprehension that not one of the mental torturing grounds they'd created for themselves - not _one_ \- had evoked such a hailstorm of sensations? How was she supposed to have prepared for this, for _everything_ at once?

Instinct had her reaching out her will to adjust things more to her liking, parcel out sight and touch and taste until she could process them, and this must be Earth, not some bizarre corner of Hell Lucifer had gotten lost and dropped them in, for her surroundings serenely refused to comply with her demands.

Even her own hair had acquired a rebellious streak, drifting across her face like the clouds as she narrowed her good eye at the mastermind of this brilliant plan. "Yeah, I'm here. Obviously."

He snorted, and not a century of writhing on the most fiendish rack she'd ever designed would have compelled Maze to admit that the almost-forgotten gleam of humor in his eyes had her thinking suddenly that this little field trip might be worth it after all. "Right, well, as I'm not even standing up straight yet, you'll forgive me for double-checking."

Maze finally lifted one foot out of the sand at that, wobbling for a moment before splaying her toes and sinking it back down, trying not to be distracted by the millions of grains shifting against her skin. "Hey, at least you've got some extra help balancing," she pointed out, jerking a thumb behind him.

Indeed, as seldom she'd seen them manifested, Lucifer's wings clearly weren't out of practice, spreading more confidently than the rest of both their bodies put together.

"I suppose I do at that."

She was looking back out to sea, trying another step, but something in his voice made her draw back warily. As a reward for that, a smooth and brittle object cracked under her foot and sent her flailing again.

Lucifer snickered at her, which was reassuring at least, and Maze put him out of her mind and set to learning the rules of this terrain. As she drew closer to the water, she found the going easier - the sand was still cool and soft, denting with her every step, but the slick of wet seemed to firm it enough to be walked atop rather than floundered through, and the first foamy edge of wave that reached to meet her felt...actually sort of nice.

But the next wave was deeper and a surprise again, dissolving the sand right out from under her. When she stubbornly planted her feet harder, the water drew back and left another packing around them, and in the space of a minute she was buried to her ankles. She cast another sidelong look at Lucifer. "This is really freaking weird."

Hell's master had been making his own explorations at the shoreline, and just now was crouched down on the damp sand, letting a retreating wave slip though his fingers. "It is that." He straightened and turned to Maze, inscrutable for a moment, then reached out and grabbed her by the hips.

One of his hands was wet and the other dry, she noted, and that felt weird too. And as he gripped tighter, she could feel the pressure _between_ her hips, where he wasn't touching her at all, and that...

That was something more than weird.

But she didn't have time to suss out what, because he yanked her up, wrenching her feet out of the sand, and tossed her spinning back into the next shallow wave. She landed ready to blister, but he paid no mind, a giddy grin plastered across his face. "We did it, Maze."

Before she could decide between 'Duh', inquiring whether he even knew yet exactly what _it_ was, or demanding he put his hands in those same places again, he was sprinting along the shoreline, dragging her by the wrist, both of them ungainly and splashing and this was ridiculous, and Maze was going to tell him off for laughing as he ran until she realized she was doing the same.

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She had no clue how long it lasted, or even whether she'd been thinking in Earth-time or Hell-time, when he finally drew panting to a halt. The sea and sky were still dark, but there were more lights on the other horizon, artificial ones. Lucifer was looking at them as well, then back the way they'd come, then at her again.

"Maze, I want you to do something for me."

She eyed him skeptically. Orders were nothing new, but he rarely began with a qualifier.

Running his hand down her arm, he covered her fist, clenched still around one of her daggers. "I want these _off_ of me."

Before she could demand an explanation, he snapped his wings out broadly, as though he were preparing again to leap out of Hell. "I want to be _here_ , Maze. Part of all this, not flying above it."

She shook free of him, reeling. "Are you crazy? Just don't manifest them then."

"I'd still know that I could. Know with every step I could just fly instead, anywhere on Earth or back _there_." He flung his arm in the presumable direction of his abandoned kingdom.

"Isn't that the plan? Eventually?" He couldn't truly mean to never go back.

"I don't know. All I know is that I need the service of your blades, Mazikeen, now wield them."

Never in her existence had Hell's first demon defied that tone of command, and as he turned his back Maze looked down at her daggers. Raised one high in a hand that didn't shake because this was what she knew. What she did. What she was. Aimed the wickedly honed curve at the base of the first wingjoint and sliced down, shaving it from the skin of his back -

And it healed around the blade, feathers seamlessly regenerating and forcing her to tug it free.

Lucifer looked back, confused as she was, before his gaze set. "They're too deep. Cut them _out_."

Maze growled. "Then hold this." She slapped one of the daggers into his grasp, freeing a hand to grasp the high edge of his pinion, and it _burned_ , burned as it had when they'd flared around her in their flight from Hell, but she ignored that and pulled hard. The wings might be divine, immune, but _he_ wasn't, and the scythe she still held sawed through bone, cleaved easily though skin and muscle, neither the blood pouring over her hand nor his choked-off gasp weakening her grip until she'd hacked the last tendon away.

Now he staggered, an ungainly form lolling to one side as his remaining wing instinctively tried to right him. The incongruity of it was somehow more gruesome than the wound on his back, and when he took the severed wing from her and grunted "Again.", she didn't hesitate to obey.


	3. Chapter 3

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 _break (n.): a disruption or separation of parts; fracture; rupture_

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In the aftermath, Maze quickly reclaimed her other knife and left Lucifer to juggle his wings, as bulky and awkward now as they'd been proudly aloft minutes ago. He could only grip parts of them, of course, leaving the bulk of the large swaths trailing off uselessly to the sides.

Gore painted her hands and arms, but there was nothing new in that, and if the smell was different than any blood she'd ever spilt before, well, that was easy enough to attribute to the intensified sensations of the physical world. "So now what?"

In answer, he led off down the shore again, and she followed his gaze to a construction of weathered wood that started out on the beach and jutted far out onto the water. Lucifer hunched over, dragging his burdens with him, and ducked under the near end, evidently making enough space in the crevice that he was able to stuff the wings into relative concealment. "There. That should keep for a bit."

Maze was dubious, but it wasn't as though they were fragile; she'd noticed as she was cutting that even the splatters of blood had merely rolled right off them.

Lucifer himself, on the other hand, was liberally coated with sand by the time he crawled back out, particularly the raw wounds on his shoulderblades and the sticky streaks of blood leading down from them. Maze had been quite deliberately avoiding the same state herself, mainly by not sitting down; her legs already felt gritty. She'd rubbed ground glass into enough orifices in Hell to make an educated guess that getting sand up your ass wasn't any fun.

But she leaned over to look and supposed Lucifer was right. She couldn't see any trace of feathers, so they were unlikely to be disturbed by a passing human unless said human were also basically tunneling under the pier. Unlikely, though possible.

Equally possible that Lucifer was already beyond healing, the wings just useless bundles of angelic flotsam now; it had occurred to her even as she carved the last chunk of flesh from her master's back that in so doing she might also be cutting off her way back home - forever.

But done was done, and as he set off once more, bearing inland this time, Mazikeen didn't look back.


End file.
